Common Yellow Scorpion

• GeneralThe commonest scorpion in Iberia; its sting is painful but not deadly.
• Like all scorpions, it glows a fluorescent blue-green under ultraviolet light, a phenomenon whose function is still debated.
• The females give birth to live young that climb onto their back and ride there until the first moult.
• It is the common yellow scorpion, the species of greatest medical importance in southern Europe and the only genuinely dangerous one on the continent.
• In Spain its sting is painful but rarely serious; in North Africa, by contrast, the local populations cause serious envenomations and deaths, above all in children. The same species has very different consequences depending on the region.
• That contrast has led to its taxonomy being revised: what used to be called Buthus occitanus turned out to be a complex of several species, and the Iberian and Maghrebi populations have been split into distinct species.
• It is an ambush hunter and detects its prey by ground vibrations, with sensory organs in its legs.
• It is viviparous, like all scorpions: the young are born fully formed and climb onto their mother's back, where they remain until their first moult.
• The antivenoms developed in Morocco against the fat-tailed scorpion also protect against this species.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (arachnid)

Habitat & environment

Dry slopes, scree and Mediterranean scrub

Sources consulted: Sousa et al., filogeografía de Buthus; Darkaoui et al. (2023), Toxins; Fauna Ibérica